Futures Surge After ECB Verbal Intervention Talks Up Stocks, Day After Fed

Yesterday it was the Fed’s latest intervention in capital markets, when shortly after yet another ghastly open, the Fed’s Bullard added some PPTness to stocks when he first said that the Fed “should delay in ending QE“, only to backtrack several hours later he said he was nervous about “staying at zero” and that the Fed is “not too far from its employment goals.” Of course, the only thing the algos heard was a delay in QE and following John Williams’ comment earlier in the week about more possible QE, have now reverted to the old central-planning regime where the Fed (and other central banks) will step in the second there is even the smallest market correction, because in the New Normal price discovery is illegal and punishable by breaking markets, such as yesterday’s DirectEdge failure at just the right time.

And yet, if the last three days all started with a rout in futures before the US market open only to ramp higher all day, today it may well be the opposite, when shortly after Europe opened it was the ECB’s turn to talk stocks higher, when literally within minutes of the European market’s open, ECB’s Coeure said that:

COEURE SAYS ECB WILL START WITHIN DAYS TO BUY ASSETS

Which was today’s code word for all is clear, and within minutes US futures, which until that moment had languished unchanged, soared by 25 points. So will today be more of the same and whatever early action was directed by the central bankers will be faded into a weekend in which only more bad news can come out of Ebola-land?

Then again, luckily algos have zero sarcasm tolerance because if they were delighted to respond to ECB’s “good cop” Coeure, then they would have puked moments after yet another ECB member, Constancio, rejected everything Coeure said:

CONSTANCIO: CEN BANKS SHOULDN’T BE MARKET MAKERS OF LAST RESORT

One can only smile with a market in which the only thing missing is the central banks’ advance report of the EOD closing print. Because fair and efficient went out of the window years ago: case in point yesterday’s DirectEdge breaking just as the selling intensified, just to prevent retail from piling into the fray and making the PPT’s momentum ignition inflection point impossible. The regulatory approach to “risk” was made even clearer when today Italian authorities took action to stem the downside and prohibit short-selling in Banca Monte dei Paschi whose shares had been suspended after they struck record lows yesterday.